Ariana

by Edward Stewart

  “That role is no longer yours. It belongs to your pupil.”

  “I’m not going to sing it. I’m letting them use my name, and then, when Vanessa steps in…”

  “Vanessa has a contract with the Metropolitan?”

  “No, not yet, but I’ll see she gets one.”

  DiScelta lifted her hands slowly and shook her head. It was a stage gesture, and it carried a battery of accusation. “Now I understand. You’ve lied to the Metropolitan.”

  “All right, I lied to them.” A flash of anger broke through Ariana’s control. “It was a small, unimportant lie. Singers do it. Management does it. Do you think when the Met announces Sutherland for six performances she actually sings them all? It’s a way of selling subscriptions and everybody understands it.”

  “You’re not doing this for management. And you’re not doing it for Vanessa. You’re doing it for him.”

  Ariana burst out: “Haven’t I a right to some happiness?”

  “Rights are for children. We’re talking about responsibilities.”

  “Doesn’t anyone have any responsibilities toward me?”

  “How do you dare complain after all life has given you?”

  Ariana sprang to her feet. “What has life given me? What kind of friends do I have? Rivals, conductors, flatterers? I’m loved one day, hated the next, rich today, broke tomorrow. I’m overworked without let-up, I can’t smoke or take a drink or go dancing or travel just to travel, I have to train like a prizefighter and put my body on the line like a mercenary, and for all I know some malicious critic can shoot me dead tomorrow. Do you call that a life?”

  “Yes—I call that the life of a world-class singer.”

  Ariana turned away from her teacher’s shouts.

  “Do you know what you have gained with this lie?” DiScelta cried. “Twenty-four hours of fame. And you have mortgaged your career—and hers. I love you, my child. But you must be strong. Weakness becomes a habit. And no lie is ever the last.”

  Ariana sank back into the chair.

  “Retract.” DiScelta placed a hand firmly on her shoulder.

  “I can’t retract. Not yet.”

  DiScelta sighed deeply. “The only purpose of human acts is to shape a destiny. Be careful, Ariana. You are shaping the wrong destiny.”

  It might have been the wrong destiny, but it was decidedly the right publicity.

  In addition to the New York Times, the story of Ariana’s gala appeared in the next day’s New York Post and News. Within twenty-four hours it was picked up in Chicago, Washington, Los Angeles, and Houston. The “Today” show asked her to do a live three-minute TV segment.

  Eight prominent hostesses invited her to dinners the following week, promising Elizabeth Taylor, Barbara Walters, Happy Rockefeller, and Henry Kissinger. Because live gossip was still the best advertising medium of all, Ariana accepted seven of the dinners and agreed to arrive for dessert at the eighth.

  Simmy Simpson looked up at the studio clock. Three seconds to go before air time. He darted a hand toward his hair, fluffing it out across the bald spot. At that instant the commercial came off the monitor and he saw himself. Not bad, Simmy, not bad, considering we haven’t slept for, what is it, two days—no, three.

  “And this morning, ladies and gentlemen,” Loretta Jansen, the hostess for the segment, was announcing, “we have a real treat for you—high society’s favorite bard and raconteur, Simeon—better known as Simmy—Simpson.”

  The camera dollied in for a closer look at Simmy, his melon-bald head sprouting like a shaved sunflower from a pleated violet crepe shirt. He waved to the cameraman. “Top of the morning to you, innocent bystanders.”

  “Simmy,” his hostess said, “there’s been an awful lot of talk about the role private investment plays in the arts in this country.”

  Simmy Simpson blew on the Tia Maria in his coffee cup. “You could only mean Nikos Stratiotis,” he said.

  “And people like Nikos Stratiotis.”

  “Ma chère amie, there is no one like Nikos Stratiotis.”

  Simmy Simpson felt himself in form this morning. Riding in from the Hamptons in the studio limousine, he’d had two black beauties, a line of coke, three bloody Marys and two grams of Vitamin C. He was positively bubbling with anecdote.

  “Simmy, could you tell us how funding of high culture has changed over the last five years?”

  “It hasn’t been a change, Loretta, it’s been a revolution—and Nikos Stratiotis, if you’ll excuse my saying it, has been the Pancho Villa of that revolution.”

  Loretta Jansen, TV’s highest-paid morning talk-show hostess, aimed a flick of her blond hairdo at the control booth, signaling the engineer to roll the archive footage. The film unreeled on the monitor, highlights of Nikos Stratiotis’s career with teasing glimpses of Newport balls, Appellate Court hearings, and polo matches.

  “Simmy, perhaps you could fill our viewers in on who’s who in these pictures?”

  “Gladly, Loretta. Gracious moi, I see you’ve uncovered a fascinating link. That tall handsome gent receiving champagne from Nikos’s overflowing jeroboam is Desmond FitzGerald, who at the time of this particular celebration was codirector of the CIA and administered millions of dollars in top-secret, unaudited contracts for—”

  Suddenly Simmy Simpson drew a blank. Unaudited contracts for what?

  Hon-eee, he told himself, think of something fast, the William Morris people did not negotiate us fifteen thousand per appearance for us to draw blanks on live coast-to-coast TV!

  “Certain Latin-American imports of a recreational nature,” he heard himself say. Mother of Dieu, what am I talking about?

  There wasn’t time to think. The sluice-gates of free association were open and words were spilling in a flood, fast and startling and very very close to the gutter, the way Simmy Simpson fans expected, and when he stopped to draw breath he hadn’t the faintest idea what confidences he had just shattered or invented. He thought he heard Loretta Jansen mention Ariana Kavalaris.

  “Ariana’s a dear,” he said emphatically. “And that voice!”

  “But are we to understand that Miss Kavalaris told you—?”

  “Loretta, dear, everyone tells moi everything.”

  Loretta Jansen stared incredulously at Simmy Simpson. “But Nikos Stratiotis is hardly the sort of man who—”

  “Oh, he’s big and gallant and I’m sure he believes it’s his machismo alone that holds the New York skyscrapers up—but a lover? Forget it. Why do you think no one wants to marry him? Why else do you think he has to chase all those young girls?”

  “You say has to, Simmy?”

  “You think he has a choice?”

  “I most certainly do. If I may speak as a female who happens to have sat next to him at dinner, he is a most attractive man and—”

  “I am not casting aspersions upon his hormones or yours, Loretta, dear, but I very much doubt that anyone has had to shall we say shoulder his peccadilloes quite so intimately as poor Ariana.”

  In his penthouse suite in the Hotel Pierre, Nikos Stratiotis whipped his head around. He stared at the gibbering television set. His jaw dropped and he spat out the Greek word for whore.

  It was as though any rational decision had been taken out of his hands and his instincts had declared war. He strode to the telephone. He snatched up the receiver and punched out a number.

  “Hello,” he snapped.

  “Hello. You sound awful. What’s the matter?”

  “When shall we marry?”

  The air in the conference room had the faint high-priced odor of senior partners’ cologne. Nikos glanced for the third time at his watch and then at the other men at the table.

  Holly Chambers leaned close to Nikos and whispered, “I hope you realize you took these fellows any from a double cram-down cash election merger. It’s costing $15,000 an hour to keep them waiting.”

  “The money doesn’t matter,” Nikos said. “She’ll be here.”

  Maggie arrived
ten minutes and $2,500 later. She was wearing an old Chanel camel’s-hair coat and she was followed by a man whom she introduced as her attorney.

  Nikos kissed his bride-to-be.

  “Didn’t mean to be late,” she said breathlessly. “There was a problem with my charge card at Bergdorf’s. I wanted to wear something blue. Blue’s my lucky color.” She opened her collar and showed him the Dior scarf around her neck. “Like it?”

  “You don’t realize it, Maggie, but that little patch of blue is probably the most expensive square foot of silk in New York City.”

  “I’m no dummy, dummy. I made them give me a discount.”

  For an instant Nikos’s forehead creased vertically. “I’m afraid these gentlemen are waiting.” He held a chair for her.

  Maggie smiled at the lawyers and sat, and the work of hammering out a marriage contract began. Negotiations went smoothly for an hour and a half, with lawyers on both sides objecting to one point or another and accepting the necessary compromises, but then Nikos said, “I want Maggie’s shares in Syndic Montenegro.”

  “I’m not allowed to sell those,” Maggie said.

  Her lawyer spoke. “All of the princess’s shares in state corporations are entailed to her descendants.”

  Nikos stared at Maggie’s lawyer. “But there’s nothing to prevent Maggie’s assigning them to me.”

  “So long as the marriage lasts,” her lawyer said.

  “So long as Maggie lives,” Nikos answered.

  Maggie’s lawyer looked at Nikos with cool fatigue. “Time out, please.” He beckoned to his client and they went to a corner.

  “Don’t let him rush you into this,” he said.

  Maggie was gazing at the lit, glassed-in shelves where one of the partners of the law firm kept his collection of duck decoys. One of the hand-painted wooden birds bore a three-inch gold plaque with a greeting from President John F. Kennedy.

  “What do you suggest I do,” Maggie said, “call off negotiations and wait for him to come back to me on my terms?”

  “That wouldn’t be a bad idea.”

  “I think the biggest mistake I could make would be to give him time to reconsider.”

  “All negotiation involves risk.”

  “I’m not going to risk this one,” Maggie said.

  She turned and walked over to Nikos’s chair and began rubbing the back of his neck. His hand closed around hers.

  “I have no objection,” Maggie said, “provided Nikos is willing to settle irrevocable trusts on my children.”

  Holly Chambers spoke. “On the children of his marriage to you.”

  “On them and on any other children I might have.”

  Nikos rose and went to the window. Across a bright canyon of empty sky the twin façades of the World Trade Center glittered like mile-high transistor radios. “One unreasonable condition deserves another,” he said. “I agree. Provided Maggie does not adopt without my consent.”

  Maggie smiled. “I can live with that provision.”

  “There’s another point,” Maggie’s lawyer said. “Both parties to this agreement are at the moment married.”

  “That is in the process of being rectified,” Nikos said.

  The lawyer’s eyes met his. “Mr. Stratiotis is doubtless aware that, traditionally, royalty may not divorce. Will he undertake to pay the costs of obtaining the princess’s papal annulment?”

  “Don’t get into this,” Holly whispered.

  Nikos shrugged the warning aside. “I’ll pay.”

  “For all I know it might be a damned nice bed to visit—but marry her?” Holly Chambers chalked the tip of the cue and leaned over the billiard table to line up his shot.

  “Why don’t you just shut up,” Nikos said.

  “Because I’m your lawyer. Seven ball in the corner pocket.” Holly drew the stick back and glanced up at Nikos. “And there’s the most god-awful premonition buzzing around inside of me.”

  “I don’t pay you for god-awful premonitions.”

  “You sure as hell do.”

  Holly nudged the tip of the stick against the cue ball and sent it spinning into the seven. A crack echoed through the partners’ billiard room. The seven ball crawled across the felt and dropped into the pocket.

  “It’s a question of honor,” Nikos said.

  Holly looked up. His eyes were deep and sharp beneath their heavy eyebrows. “You mean you argued with Ariana and you want to show her. Nikos, this is a very expensive way of thumbing your nose.”

  “I am praying for the strength not to bash your face in.”

  “You really want to go back in there and sign that suicide warrant?”

  Nikos raised his cue. “Holly, whatever it costs me, whatever she is, I’m marrying the bitch, all right?”

  A crowd of reporters was waiting when Ariana stepped out of the townhouse.

  “Miss Kavalaris, any comment on Mr. Stratiotis’s engagement?”

  She hadn’t known. Her heart gave a sickening lurch and she felt herself falling into empty space. “Naturally I wish Nikos good luck in all his undertakings.”

  “How long have you known he was planning to marry Principessa Maggie?”

  Her eyes crinkled but she tried to show not a flicker of surprise. She took her bearings on the limousine parked at the curb and strode forward through the human thicket. “Since they met.”

  “How in the world did you let a rich hunk like Nikos Stratiotis slip through your fingers?”

  Ariana held up her hands and she thanked God for the last-minute insecurity that had made her put on her diamonds.

  “I spread my fingers very, very wide.”

  Someone snapped a picture of the diva with forty-carat, widespread fingers. The chauffeur was holding the door of the limousine for her and she was about to step in.

  “Do you have any feelings about Mr. Stratiotis’s leaving you for a younger woman?”

  She turned and met the eyes of the woman who had asked the question. She knew she was taking the first step beyond a boundary that she would never be able to cross back over. But she had no choice. Nikos had dealt her a public humiliation and she had to reply in kind.

  “If you’ll allow me to set the record straight, Mr. Stratiotis did not leave me. It was I who left him because of irreconcilable differences. He is understandably lonely and the principessa is understandably eager to console him. Many women are. As to the question of age, the principessa has never struck me as a young person. Younger, yes. But young, no—she is far too wise. And Nikos is not interested in youth. He is attracted only to wisdom. That’s why he collects great art and cultured friends.”

  “Do you predict a happy marriage for them?”

  “I foresee no other possibility. The principessa can tell him what life is like in a discothèque. One day she will go to the moon and perhaps she will take him with her. She belongs very much to tomorrow, and now so does Nikos. They both make me very grateful for today.”

  She got into the limousine and waved to the reporters from the window. As the car pulled into traffic she was overwhelmed by a sense that her sun was setting.

  By the time she returned home the reporters had gone. She took the elevator directly up to the music room.

  Dear God, please help me.

  She sat down at the piano and opened the score of Traviata and struck the first chord of Scene One.

  DiScelta was seated at the Steinway. “When are they going to announce your cancellation?”

  “I’m not canceling,” Ariana said quietly.

  “But you promised.” DiScelta rose, and Ariana instinctively stepped back. “You swore to me you were going to cancel and Vanessa would sing!”

  “I’ll keep my promise—soon.”

  “What kind of an artist says soon? An artist says now!”

  “Maybe I’m not an artist. Maybe I’m just a woman.”

  DiScelta looked at Ariana as though she were some kind of pathetic caged bird. “You’re still trying to show him. Hoping he’ll
read your publicity and come to the stage door and say, ‘Oh, Ariana, it was all a mistake, may I have your autograph and your hand in marriage?’ And in the meantime, what about the promise you made to music?”

  “Music isn’t enough.”

  DiScelta wheeled on her. “Not enough? Music is the only thing that lasts! Your loves, your jealousies, your little happinesses and despairs, they come and go—but music is forever!”

  Ariana’s eyelids dropped. She felt her teacher’s hand under her chin, lifting it till their gazes met.

  “How can I make you see? A promise is a natural law, like gravity. You cannot tamper with it. If you do this, if you take the role that you swore to give to your pupil, your life as an artist is over—and your life as a woman will not matter.”

  Ariana did not answer.

  “Do you want to spend eternity in hell?” DiScelta screamed.

  Ariana broke loose. “Panagia mou! Voïthia!”

  DiScelta stared at her furiously. “Greek is not one of my languages.”

  “I’m saying I’m in hell now, don’t you understand? I’m trying to get out!”

  “I forbid you to go through with the performance. For your sake—not just hers, not just mine—I absolutely forbid it!”

  “Forbid all you want,” Ariana cried. “I’m singing the role!”

  26

  AN ICY JANUARY DOWNPOUR RAISED A LATHER IN THE GUTTERS outside the Philadelphia Academy of Music. Inside, the performance of Traviata began at 8:07 when the conductor lifted his baton and gave the orchestra the upbeat to the Prelude.

  In New York City, the night sky was clear and starry, the air crystal cold. Inside the darkened Metropolitan Opera House Boyd Kinsolving lifted his baton at 8:11, and Verdi’s opening measures sighed out from the ethereal, unaccompanied violins.

  Vanessa had prepared arduously. She had hoarded her voice, hardly even speaking for the twenty-four hours before the performance.

  With her very first phrase, “Flora, amici, la notte che resta,” she knew the effort had been well spent. She could sense a warmth flowing from the audience. Her voice felt right, her character felt centered, and she could feel the subscribers settling back securely in their seats.